LITMIR.BIZ

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      For several years now, he’d known of Maggie Ketchum. Every now and then he would spot Hugh’s pretty widow in town, going about the business of shopping and running errands. She was a member of the rich Ketchum family, a family that had settled in San Juan County more than sixty years ago and established the T Bar K Ranch, a range of property that took up a big hunk of northern New Mexico. Three sons and one daughter had been born to Tucker and Amelia Ketchum: Hugh, Seth, Ross and Victoria. Only the last three members of the family were living, and they co-owned the ranch, along with Maggie, who had inherited Hugh’s share after his untimely death.

      Daniel had never expected to meet Maggie face-to-face. She was hardly the type of woman who moved in a county deputy’s social circle. But almost a year ago, the remains of Noah Rider, a one-time foreman of the T Bar K, had been discovered on the Ketchum property. As a result, Daniel had been handed the job of interviewing some of the family members who lived on the ranch. Maggie had been one of them. And he hadn’t been able to forget her since.

      “Calm down, Maggie. We’ll find him. But first I need to ask you a few things. Let’s go to the porch—out of the sun,” he suggested.

      She nodded jerkily, and he took her by the upper arm and led her through the wooden gate and across a small yard kept green by sprinklers. One end of the elevated porch was shaded by a ponderosa pine. Daniel guided her to the cooler shadows where rattan furniture was grouped in a cozy circle.

      After helping her into one of the chairs, he took a seat to her right and eased his Stetson off his head.

      Watching his slow, purposeful movements caused Maggie to erupt with impatience. “We’re wasting time sitting here like this!” she argued. “We need to be out looking! And I still would have been searching if I hadn’t taken the time to come here to the house to call the sheriff’s department!”

      Seeing she was on the verge of becoming hysterical, Daniel reached for her hand and gripped it tightly. “Look, Maggie, it doesn’t do any good to run about searching here and there without any sort of direction or reason.”

      She stared at him with wild blue eyes. “That’s easy for you to say! You don’t have a child! You don’t know what it’s like to think he might—”

      “Stop it, Maggie!” he interrupted roughly. “If you want to find Aaron you’ve got to get a grip on yourself and help me. Do you understand?”

      His sternness seemed to get through to her, and her shoulders sagged as she nodded dutifully. “Yes. I’m sorry, Deputy Redwing. It’s just that I’m so worried and—”

      He squeezed her hand. “You called me Daniel a minute ago,” he said gently. “Why don’t you keep it that way? And there would be something wrong with you if you weren’t worried. So now that we understand each other, tell me when Aaron went missing.”

      She drew in a deep, shuddering breath, then released it. “I don’t know.”

      “Okay,” he said, then started over again. “When was the last time you saw your son?”

      “About eleven-thirty. He finished his lunch and then asked me if he could go down to the ranch yard to visit with Skinny. I gave him permission and told him to be back home by one.”

      Skinny was the oldest ranch hand on the T Bar K. Somewhere in his seventies, the man had worked for the Ketchum family for as long as he and everyone else on the ranch could remember. The old cowboy was good at telling tall tales, and all the kids loved him. Daniel figured it wasn’t unusual for Aaron to go for a daily visit with Skinny.

      Glancing at his wristwatch, he noticed it was nearly three. “Does Skinny know when Aaron left the ranch yard?”

      She shook her head. “He says that Aaron never showed up. So I can only assume that for some reason or other he never went there.”

      The T Bar K Ranch was an enormous property of more than a hundred thousand acres with the ranch house and working headquarters nestled among the foothills of the San Juan Mountains. The nearest neighbors lived miles away, and since none of them had children, Daniel doubted very much that Aaron had headed to any one of the bordering properties, but there was always a remote chance.

      “Do you think someone might have picked him up…and…and kidnapped him?” Maggie stammered out the fearful thought that had been going around in her head all afternoon.

      No doubt about it, the Ketchums were a rich family, Daniel thought. They’d be able to pay a huge ransom to get one of their own back into the family fold. But Daniel didn’t believe any such evil thing had happened, and he quickly shook his head to allay Maggie’s fears.

      “No. The only strangers who come here on the ranch are cattle or horse buyers—not perverts out to kidnap a little boy.”

      She gripped his hand and leaned toward him as though she needed to be closer to make him understand her fears. Daniel could have told her he was already feeling her pain. It radiated from her eyes and emanated from the rigid lines of her body.

      “But how can you be so sure? Noah Rider was murdered on this place, and nobody knew it for a long time! And even then—”

      “Maggie!” he gently scolded. “Forget about all that. It’s in the past. Noah was killed by an old acquaintance—Rube Dawson. He was a blackmailer who didn’t want to lose his illicit income. Rube’s serving his time in prison, and that crime has nothing to do with Aaron. Now tell me, were you and your son getting along all right at lunchtime? Was he angry at you about anything in the past few days?”

      Going still, she looked him directly in the eye. “You think he’s run away.”

      Daniel nodded, and as soon as he did, he could see tears flood her blue eyes. The sight cut him right through the heart.

      “Maybe.”

      She looked away from him and swallowed hard. “Aaron didn’t seem to be upset at lunch,” she said in a strained voice. “He seemed fine. But he was angry with me yesterday. I wouldn’t allow him to go on a weekend camping trip with a group of boys.”

      “Why?”

      She frowned. “What does that have to do with anything? It won’t tell us where Aaron is.”

      “Maybe. Maybe not,” he said smoothly. “Right now I need every bit of information to go on. And I mean everything,” he repeated firmly.

      Once again she breathed deeply and tried to brace herself against the swell of terror washing over her. “All right. I didn’t allow Aaron to go because the trip was going to be with a group of teenagers. And since Aaron is only nine, I didn’t really want him to be exposed to the language and behavior that would be going on behind the chaperones’ backs.”

      “He’s got to hear it sometime.”

      Maggie grimaced. “Yes. But I’d rather it be later. So I told him he couldn’t go and to forget about it. Of course he came back with the usual things that kids say when they’re angry. That I was mean to him. That I didn’t want him to have any fun. That I wouldn’t let him do anything because I—”

      She suddenly stopped, and her eyes fell to their coupled hands. Daniel wondered if she was noticing the stark difference between their skins. His, dark copper-brown; hers, milk-white. Daniel was a Ute Indian, from the Weeminuche band, something he didn’t much think about—until he was with this woman.

      “Because you what?” he prodded.

      Her head shook slightly back and forth. “Because I was too scared—that I was afraid he would be killed in an accident—like his father.”

      Whether that was true or not didn’t matter at the moment, Daniel decided. Aaron obviously believed his mother was overprotective, and he figured the boy had lashed out at her by disappearing.

      “We’ll find him, Maggie.” Rising from the chair, he helped her to her feet. “Did you see him when he left the house to go down to the ranch yard?”

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